Sun Oh Sun Oh Sun!

This morning our local tv weatherman said seven of the most encouraging, marvelous words:

"Today will be mostly to partly sunny."

Oh my. I am still, three hours later, happy dancing and twirling inside my head.

I mean, during the past two weeks (or longer) we've had, three, maybe four, hours of peeks of sun through dark clouds. That's it. Trust me, I pay attention to these things. The hundreds of other hours were only eerie, still grey darkness which all too early deepened into black night.

But today! The skies are gleaming blue and clear and sunny and I am celebrating. I think I'll run upstairs to our yellow kitchen (my own attempt at inside sunshine) and make coffee, pour it into my thermos, then drive the mile to the river and sit and soak up the sun and read and soak up the sun and drink coffee and soak up the sun and--

Really, all those constant dreary clouds were beginning to rattle me--I'd not had problems with that seasonal disorder stuff since we lived in a tiny, hidden mountain town in California where winters (in my memory anyway) were nine months of long, dreary darkness and dumpings of daily snow and cabin fever was just 'one of those things' you either lived or died with....

But here in New York, usually winter has a three-dark-days-three-sunny-days pattern, with only small variances. For thirteen years I've gotten along just fine with that pattern. This new pattern, this one hour of sunlight for every one-hundred hours of darkness, well, it nearly sent me over the edge, no matter how many walks I took, or hours I sat beside lamps and in front of windows.

There's just something about sunlight.

So now it's time to escape from this dark basement office with its two piddly, inadequate fluorescent lamps (ick. You know those scarey tv shows where a guy is working at his desk, alone in the buidling at night, with only a small lamp beside him--and then someone sneaks up on him and kills him? Well, our office looks like that all the time.)..... out to the great outdoors where, trust me, I'll be gathering sun rays while I may.